Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1887-01-01
The H. G.. T. Club Aboard.

Time Club has to have gone aboard.
Our Western correspondent furnishes
the club some good advice in the fol-
lowing extract from letter received
a few days ago.
Ifit were possible to annihilate
space, and / could command the OPP
portunity of being present at these
gatherings, l could wish that it had
been born an Emerson club pure and
simple--pure and simple certainly,
if it were conducted in the same spirit
f; in which the sage of Concord wrote.
BY such concentration of forces, l
believe investigation would be made
a pleasant task, and its results more
satisfactory than that derived from
promiscuons and often ill-timed read
ing. Very few of the club would, l
believe, have any sympathy with
Emerson's Observation-Disclosures
age is too material, possibly too en-
pirical, for that philosophy to become
very popular, but after reading his
essay on "The Transcendentallist," it
must be allowed that he has a wonder
full power of convincing one against
his will. Emerson is forcible writ
err, not so much because of his power
of discovering truth as of uncovering
it; not so much for his revelation of
the new, as for singular capacity for
convincing us Of the truth Of the old.
No other writer-alWayS excepting
the incompatible bard ofStratford on
.Avon-has, it seems to me, the same
power of saying "what has oft been
thought, but meier so well expressed"
An Emerson club, made up, Of en-
thusiastic fImersonians' would indeed
be a Joy forever-or at least until
New Years day, when fresh leaf is
to be turned over. In the course of
their literary peregrinations, the club
will probably turn their ears to the
prophets of their own country, and
Miss Murfree will stand shivering in
the balance. | am anxious to know
their verdict on.one who has lately
gained for herself sIch a name in the
republic of letters. 1t will likely be
favorable, as she was once their
neighbor by separation of only a
few miles; and if anything could stay
the critics trenchant pen and demand
a charitable judgment, surely the
consideration of state and neighborly
pride would. Over her pen name,
Miss NJ. had a character sketch in the
last Harper's Weekly, portraying the
vices and virtues of those study
Tennessee mountaineers. To speak
candidly have no taste for her stories
The dialect Of that rude class becomes
monotonous in the extreme, and half
ones time is taken up in solving these
problems of speech, and in the story
spoken of, "The Provisioning of
Pardee's Land" the most noticeable
feature is the incongruity between
the language used and the subject
treated. The simplicity of the noun
taineer's life should demand, it would
appear, nothing more pretensions
than the plainest Anglo Saxon, but
here is found the Hottest rhetoric and
the most classical diction; nor does
the writer stop there; words that
have been long obsolete or prescribed
are dragged in as if to advertise her
antique lore and extensive vocabu-
larry.
/ am not saying that Charles Egg
bert Craddock is not deservedly pop
ular. The very class from which
her heroes and heroines are taken, is
r sufficient to engage an attentive ear
=, from those readers to whom that
kind of life is novelty. 1 am only
+ saying that our young Tennessee
writer does not find in me devotee,
, and that l have given the reasons for
the faith that is in me is, | trust, an
, eXtenuation of the offence of audacity
The objects of the H-a-g-t Club .are
not new, for it has only come to dc
for country town just what the
, author of every new volume declares
his work is to do for mankind-fll q
long-felt want, but that it will do il
, heartily and well is my wish.
S. l.. c.
Kansas City, Dec. Goth, 1886.
l Murfreesboro News: The lease
l L